


Doctor Melody Williams

by merryghoul



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, False Identity, Gen, Groundhog Day, Present Tense, Psychotropic Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-11 20:43:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5641249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/pseuds/merryghoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doctor Melody Williams: professor by day, adventurer by night.  Or is that the other way around?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doctor Melody Williams

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Three Professors](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/218653) by merryghoul. 



> Ladies Bingo prompt: Thank God it's Friday... Again: Time Loops  
> HC Bingo prompt: hallucinations  
> Fic Promptly fill: [Any, any, Dreams are postcards from our subconscious, inner self to outer self, right brain trying to cross that moat to the left. Too often they come back unread: "return to sender, addressee unknown." That's a shame because it's a whole other world out there -- or in here depending on your point of view.](XXX) (Fill here is heavily edited from the original fill.)

Doctor Melody Williams wakes up in her apartment on the Lower East Side. It's a modest one room apartment in New York City, one paid for with a combination of her salary and the insurance money she inherited as a child after the death of her parents. But it's all she needs. She's in love with her job as a tenured archaeology professor at Columbia University. She loves nobody else.

After showering and picking out her clothes--a grey blouse paired with a grey shirt and black shoes--she brews herself a cup of coffee. Yesterday was her "Collecting and Displaying Archaeology Artifacts" class, a required class for all graduate archaeology students. Today she's teaching her favourite class this semester, the "Art of the Song Dynasty" graduate lecture class. Doctor Williams knows Song dynasty art well. It's what she did her graduate thesis on at Cambridge. Twirling a red pen in her right hand, she studies her lecture notes before she has to get on the train to Columbia University.

 

After her class, Doctor Williams opens her office to students for an hour in case they need anything from her. A woman with long red hair stands in Doctor Williams' doorway. "River?" The woman's voice has a Scottish accent. "What are you doing here?"

"Excuse me," Doctor Williams says. "Are you here for office hours?"

"You know who I am, River."

"Who's River? I've heard of River Phoenix, River Tam in _Firefly,_ and Rivers Cuomo. I don't have a River in my class."

"River, you know who I am. It's me--"

Doctor Williams shakes her head. She walks to the door of her office, grabbing the door's handle. "I'm sorry. I don't know who you are, and I don't know who this River is. I'm going to have to ask you to leave or I'll be forced to call security." 

 

That night, Doctor Williams dreams she's in 1938 Berlin. She's not surprised she's dreaming of Berlin; she's done research on Nazi Germany, its culture and its relics. What surprises Doctor Williams is that she dreams she's a Black British girl in 1938 Berlin. Adolf Hitler has just shot her by accident--he was trying to shoot someone else. Instead of dying, she's bathing in golden light. 

A man in a bow tie hides two people--one of them the woman with the long red hair--away from her as she's glowing. Moments later, the light flows from her head and every limb on her body. Doctor Williams feels pain all over her body. It's the worst pain she's ever felt in her life. She imagines this is what being flayed alive feels like. And she feels two furious heartbeats within herself. Something in the back of Doctor Williams' head is telling her she's done this before, years ago, when she was a little girl. (And that was when she grew the second heart, because she certainly was born with one heart.) Doctor Williams reminds herself that when she was a little girl, the worst pain she felt was when she broke her arm while falling out of a tree. 

When the gold light ends, Doctor Williams gasps. She's back in her own body. Then the dream ends. 

 

Doctor Melody Williams wakes up in her apartment on the Lower East Side. After showering and picking out her clothes--a grey blouse paired with a grey shirt and black shoes--she brews herself a cup of coffee. Twirling a red pen in her right hand, she studies her lecture notes before she has to get on the train to Columbia University.

 

After office hours, Doctor Williams goes to a New American café near Columbia University for lunch. She orders a sandwich and sparkling water. After lunch, she plans to go back to her office and do a few more work-related things before going back to her apartment. 

Lunch comes. The woman with the long red hair follows. "River, you know me," the woman with the long red hair says.

Doctor Williams shakes her head. "I'm afraid I don't." 

"River, I'm your mum. Amy."

"My mother's name is Tegan. She died in a car crash years ago."

"Tegan?" Amy shakes her head in disbelief. "Where'd you get that from?"

"I'm telling you, my mother's name was Tegan and my father's name was Harry. After they died, my grandmother Polly raised me. I've never known an Amy in my life, unless she was one of my students."

A waiter comes by Doctor Williams' table. "Miss? Is this woman bothering you?" the waiter says. 

Doctor Williams nods. The waiter takes Amy, attempting to run back to Doctor Williams, away from her table.

 

That night, Doctor Williams dreams she's inside a prison. Wherever this prison is, it's not on Earth. It's raining nonstop, and there isn't any sign of a sun to be found. 

Doctor Williams doesn't know how she got inside the prison. She sees a big thing on her wrist, like the child of a blood pressure cuff and a watch, and she thinks she's gotten into the prison with the thing on her wrist. She's wearing a tight black catsuit, one that accentuates all her curves and shows off her cleavage. She loves the catsuit. It makes her feel like she's Julie Newmar or Eartha Kitt. It makes her feel...sexy. Doctor Williams has never felt sexy in her whole life.

Doctor Williams passes by all sorts of security--guards, cameras, sensors--with ease. She feels as if she's been doing it for a while. She arrives to what she recognizes as her prison cell. She picks the lock and goes in the cell.

In the cell is a door on the side of the wall. Doctor Williams feels compelled to knock on it. A whole wardrobe opens up in front of her. She picks out a dull green outfit and dresses behind the wardrobe. Once she's in the green outfit, she walks up to the cell door. "Hello, boys," Doctor Williams says, flashing her cleavage towards some prison guards outside her cell. Then the dream ends. 

 

Doctor Melody Williams wakes up in her apartment on the Lower East Side. After showering and picking out her clothes--a grey blouse paired with a grey shirt and black shoes--she brews herself a cup of coffee. Twirling a red pen in her right hand, she studies her lecture notes before she has to get on the train to Columbia University.

 

Doctor Williams goes through her day without any unpleasant incidents. She does her lecture on Liu Songnian's works in class. She holds office hours without any incident. She goes to her New American café and has a sandwich and sparkling water without any issue. And then she heads home. 

Doctor Williams cooks spaghetti straight from a box. She serves the spaghetti with meatballs she has taken out of a frozen bag and reheated, and she's serving them with red wine. It's her dinner. When she's about to eat, she hears a knock on her door.

At the door is Amy. She's holding a stack of papers. 

"Oh, so you are a student," Doctor Williams said. "Is that a paper you want me to look at?"

"Yeah. It's a paper _you_ wrote." 

"I never wrote you any paper."

"You listen to me, River Song. This is your subconscious talking to you. I didn't go through all this trouble turning into your mum and showing you what you do when you're not stuck in this dream."

"You know what I've been dreaming about?"

"The second time you regenerated. One of those times you sneaked into Stormcage." Amy thrusts the papers into Doctor Williams' hands. "This manuscript. _Melody Malone: Private Detective in Old New York Town._ You wrote this and told me to publish it with a forward so I could say farewell to the Doctor, in a way. _You_ were Melody Malone. And don't tell me you don't remember." 

"You mean my--"

"Don't start. You were on New Savannah in the year 5,000,000,000. You were looking for artefacts in the remains of a building there. And then you fell asleep."

"I'm not--"

"Shut up. Look at what you wrote, River."

Doctor Williams looks at the manuscript. She remembers losing her parents--her real parents, not whoever Tegan and Harry are in this reality--to the Weeping Angel in New York and writing _Melody Malone: Private Detective in Old New York Town._ Amy is right-- _River's_ life isn't Columbia University during the day and lonely pasta dinners at night. Her life is everything she thought was a dream. And her dreams were much, much better than her fake reality in this fake New York.

River hugs Amy, although she knows this Amy isn't real. "Mum, how am I asleep?"

"A Sleep patch. And they scratched you. I think they're Catkind."

"I think I remember a black Catkind following me while I was looking in the ruins of New Savannah. Where's the Sleep patch?"

"It's on your left hand."

"I'm willing to believe that Catkind was aiming for the neck." River fluffs her hair. " _Nothing_ gets past the hair. Now, let's see..." River brings her hand to her face. "I don't see anything on my hand here, but if I peel it..." River digs her nails into her skin. 

 

River, now awake and free from the influence of the Sleep patch, finds a blaster in the ruins of New Savannah. It doesn't take her long to find the black Catkind that was stalking her. "I don't know what your agenda is and why you want to stop me," she says, cocking the blaster right into the Catkind's face. You can either stay here or run away. And if you stay here, I should let you know I'm not afraid to kill you."

 

That night, River dreams of the apartment exploding as she watches on from the street. She doesn't feel bad about the explosion. It's not like she ever was Doctor Melody Williams in the first place.


End file.
